THE PULSATING DRAMA OF BROADWAY’S BARED HEARTS SPEAKS AND SINGS WITH A VOICE TO STIR YOUR SOUL!

Two sisters (Anita Page, Bessie Love) try to break through on Broadway, but allow men to come between them.

The second film to win the Best Picture Oscar was popular in its day, but hasn’t aged gracefully. Part of a musical trend, and cheerfully so, there isn’t much else in the film worthy of attention. Uneven performances; Love has charisma as the perkiest of the sisters, but Charles King is wooden as the established Broadway star who brings the sisters to New York.

The story has a simple love triangle, burdened by uninspired dialogue. 

1929-U.S. 100 min. B/W. Directed by Harry Beaumont. Story: Edmund Goulding. Songs: Nacio Herb Brown, Arthur Freed (”You Were Meant for Me”). Cast: Anita Page (Queenie Mahoney), Bessie Love (Harriet ”Hank” Mahoney), Charles King (Eddie Kearns), Jed Prouty, Kenneth Thomson, Edward Dillon… James Gleason. 

Trivia: One scene was originally shown in Technicolor. Remade as Two Girls on Broadway (1940); the film also inspired similarly-named films Broadway Melody of 1936, Broadway Melody of 1938 and Broadway Melody of 1940.

Oscar: Best Picture.